


Color Blind

by athos



Series: Colorblind Soulmate AUs [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Hawke's gender intentionally ambiguous, Off-screen Character Death, Other, Soulmate AU, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 16:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8409478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athos/pseuds/athos
Summary: Inspired by a Tumblr exchange: "AU where everything is black and white until you meet your soulmate. ADDITIONALLY: when your soulmate dies, the world goes back to black and white."Fenris' world is black and white until he meets Hawke. Story covers Fenris' time in Tevinter through Hawke's involvement at Adamant in Inquisition.





	

 

 

He’d assumed for years that the ritual that had taken his memories and branded the hateful lyrium into his flesh had also taken color from him. If he’d not heard his master making references to Imperial purple or Agreggio red, if he’d not had other slaves haltingly try to explain to him what colors were, he never would have noticed their absence in his black and white existence. He was in good company, however, as color only came to one with their "soulmate" _,_ whatever nonsense that was. Slaves didn’t get soulmates.

 He overheard other slaves in Tevinter whisper about the Magisters and how they would show off their colorful vocabulary. Being with one’s soulmate was a prestigious achievement, more and more colors apparently becoming discernable as you grew closer, and of course the Magisters would endlessly outdo one another in describing their clothes ("Amaranth and copper? What was she thinking!"), the carpets (sarcoline and hoarfrost, ebony and eburnean), the clouds in the Fade (octarine), the light catching on a slave-girl’s hair (sepulchral grey), the contrast between it and her blood (crimson) as she died, gasping.

 Fenris never knew for certain whether Danarius' confident descriptions were accurate, but no one ever disputed his words. How could they--think of the social ruin if they objected and no one backed them up? What if they were revealed to be the only one feigning their color-sight? No Magister would risk the scandal.

 Many of the slaves whispered that none of the Masters could see anything, because who could have a soulmate who was so cruel?

 

***

 

When he had traveled more, he thought about how colors that so many people couldn’t see had become widely used symbolically and across lands and languages. He understood being _green with envy_ , having _lips like roses_ or _a yellow streak,_ looking _pinker than a sunburnt nug,_  having been _beaten black and blue,_ even though he’d never seen any of those colors. He knew that people described monotonous, joyless lives as _living grey as ghosts._ Often, cleaning blood (red, he presumed) off of his armor (coal black, Danarius had specified) after killing yet another band of slave-catchers, he wondered if he was living as grey as a ghost.

 He wondered if the color of his life mattered, while he had nothing to compare it with.

 

***

 

Free people in the City of Chains spoke of color vision much as the Magisters had. People were the same everywhere. Fenris wondered what color tedium was, and wished that instead of soulmates, one gained colors when their mission was completed--he was far more likely to kill Danarius than to meet a soulmate. Thoughts of color, however, were an idle pastime. He’d never believed in soulmates, and believed less and less in colors at all. The romantic idea that one’s vision would magically become enhanced if you met someone who was magically destined to make your life complete sounded more and more like something a Magister or King had invented, something unverifiable, unprovable, serving no purpose other than to make them feel superior to others. The hope of colors was simply another chain used by the powerful to to distract the powerless from their misery.

 Late one evening in Kirkwall’s alienage, the dusty ground littered with the corpses of the slave-catchers he’d flushed out, Fenris raised his head and eyes to meet those of a human warrior, and in a blinding and life-altering instant he realized how terribly wrong he'd been and understood **everything** _._

 

***

 

Having color-vision was disorienting, to say the least. Fortunately Hawke’s eclectic band included a few who had genuinely experienced color: the brusque Aveline who always looked at the shield she bore (even though she'd been offered better shields), the smirking Varric who laughed and stroked his crossbow, and the mage who clenched his jaw and hid his hands to hide their shaking but never looked away quickly enough to hide his tears. Fenris preferred to save his questions for Leandra Hawke, who patiently explained with memories shared in a wistful voice. With Hawke's companions, Fenris named new colors: a particular shiny almost-metallic orange was  _Aveline's hair_ ; off-white with feelings of patience and optimism was  _Sebastian's armor_ ; a beautiful and warm brown was  _Isabela after a swim_ ;  _Abomination's eyes_ was not Fenris' favorite color, and he never understood why Hawke was so patient when they all saw it; the color gradient from tan-pink to pinched white was  _smug dwarf who had better keep his damned mouth shut_ ; later, the malevolent, wrong, pulsing red of  _stone Meredith_.

 Some colors he and Hawke worked out for themselves, special colors known only to the two of them: a special shade of pinked flesh would always be _Hawke’s flushed chest before orgasm_ , a semi-transparent blue-white was _Fenris’ markings during sex_. Also while killing Tevinter slavers, Hawke cheekily observed. Fenris blandly responded that one act was nearly as satisfying as the other.

 He and Hawke didn’t always get along, and Fenris sometimes wondered if the bond between soulmates could break, if a sufficiently heated argument could turn his vision--his life--colorless again. Varric and Leandra reassured him that no, that wasn’t possible. Once gained, the only way for someone to lose their ability to see color was for their soulmate to die.

 Never, Fenris thought, his greatsword (silverite grey and shimmering with enchantment blue) cleaving the Arishok’s torso (flat grey shiny with sweat and spattered with sanguine flecks) in two, the Qunari’s great warhammer (serpentstone green  with chartreuse ribbons tied to the end to distract his foe) crashing to the floor (ugly dusty beige and rotted leaf brown, darkened with spilled wine and yet more blood). His eyes (emerald green, Hawke said) met Hawke’s (joy, welcome, love, home). Never.

 Never.

 

***

 

After Kirkwall his life resumed the course it was on before Kirkwall--travel, free slaves, kill slavers. Now, however, Fenris had Hawke with him. The Fenris who lived life as grey as a ghost was long past, and they were happy together.

 Rumors and growing strife darkened their days, but for all the growing shadows the colors they saw with each other were no less saturated. They stayed steps ahead of the Inquisition, warned by Varric’s correspondences (written in deep violet ink from Rivaini squids and sealed with eye-catching indigo wax swirled with gold) and their own good sense. When Hawke became concerned about the Grey Wardens, the two of them had established a small, self-sustained village of freed elven slaves. Fenris accompanied Hawke to snow-bright Skyhold and to miserable Crestwood, but he drew the line at the bleached desert of the Western Approach. Just as well that he stay, as some of his neighbors’ former masters hadn’t taken kindly to being deprived of their toys, and Fenris again had the unique joy of killing arrogant slave-catchers and teaching his companions the most efficient ways to do so.

 Fenris instructed Hawke to shake down Varric for the silver the dwarf still owed him from their last game of Wicked Grace before Isabela set sail with Merrill. “And don’t take all season about it,” he finished with a stern look.

 Hawke kissed him and said, “I love you, too, Fenris.”

 Teaching the elves to live independent from masters kept Fenris busy, and he suspected some of them were inventing tasks or feigning confusion in their lessons to prevent him from brooding overmuch on Hawke’s absence. One morning he was sparring with Anhaar, one of three former Tevinter slaves who were Tal-Vashoth when they’d been captured. The leaves on the shading trees were turning, changing from bright green at the canopy, made transparent in the sunlight, through yellow, orange and reddish-brown closer to the ground. The hard-packed dirt of the training salle was pink from the local flagstone. The three sun-bronzed children ran after pale brown nugs, kicking up sepia dirt behind them. Anhaar’s grey face was flushed with sweat and exertion, his sweaty blue-black hair braided back between the sawn-off stumps of his polished copper-bright horns. His sea-glass blue eyes flashed with mischief above his black-painted lips and shining white grin. Fenris’ faded green tunic had smears of brighter green from wrestling in the dewey grass with the irritatingly slobbery moorit-and-cream mabari Hawke found somewhere. The sky was intense blue, only barely lighter than Hawke’s eyes.

 Fenris didn’t know that he knew all the colors of that moment, wasn't aware that they would forever be seared into his memory, until he realized mid-swing that he didn’t see them anymore. His body automatically sidestepped to evade Anhaar’s blow and his heavy practice sword fell from limp fingers to thump on the dirt below. Why was everything fading, like a mist covering his eyes? It was too late for fog, with the sun high overhead. He distantly heard Anhaar calling his name as he motionlessly puzzled out what was happening. Slowly Fenris raised his eyes from the grey ground up Anhaar’s bare grey feet and grey trousers and grey chest and grey face and grey eyes and grey horns and the grey leaves and grey sky beyond and he screamed and screamed and screamed until everything grey became black.

 

***

 

Grey letters on grey parchment sealed with a lump of dull grey wax.

  _Broody,_

  _It only just occurred to me that I don’t have to break the news to you, because of course you would be the first to know, but I couldn’t say nothing. The worst thing is the only words I have to say are I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, and I would do anything, give anything, to be able to return Hawke to us, to you. Hawke died in the fucking Fade, and in doing so saved all of us, and maybe all of fucking Thedas, but I don’t care. I can't say this to anyone here, but I can say it to you: I would give anything to have Hawke back, for my own selfish sake but mostly for yours. _

  _If you want your winnings, Broody, you’ll have to collect them yourself from me in Skyhold. I’m sure it’s no comfort now, but Hawke believed in what the Inquisition--what the Inquisitor--is doing, and you would be more than welcome here. There’s no one here quite like you, Fenris,_ ~~_and I have no one to mourn with_ _._ ~~

_Varric_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My mother is dying and I have a problem with reflexively repressing "bad"/uncomfortable emotions, so when I saw this prompt on Tumblr and was inspired to interact with my grief through writing, I jumped on it. I enjoyed writing it, but apparently I broke some hearts after I posted to Tumblr. No surprises here; it's just what you expect. Hopefully the journey there will be of some value to you.


End file.
